Oh So Many Things!

As an old fashioned Democratic Socialist, I am both heartened and slightly thrilled by events in Moscow and Europe over the last few days. America, with its withering tolerance of intellectualism, even in the best of times, would find it difficult to understand the significance of Garry Kasparov's arrest yesterday.

Russian premier Vladimir Putin was yesterday confronted with a genuine popular revolt. About 2,000 opposition demonstrators gathered in Pushkin Square, defying an official ban on their meeting and threats of arrest. It was the largest-ever anti-Putin rally in the Russian capital.

The man who was supposed to lead it, Garry Kasparov - Russia's former world chess champion - was detained as soon as he emerged from his taxi. Driven off to a Moscow court in a police van, he emerged defiant, during a break in proceedings, to tell about a dozen supporters that in its response to the protest 'the régime showed its true colours'. He was later fined 1,000 roubles - the equivalent of about £20 - and freed.

Guardian, April 15, 2007

And then there's Paul Wolfowitz. One of the architects of the Iraq invasion and a pillar of the Project for the New American Century is at the middle of yet another scandal. Wolfowitz's job as president of the World Bank was hanging by a thread this weekend after a concerted effort by European ministers to shame him into resigning. Governor Bush, whose support of the World Bank president echoes his shameless promotion of favored cronies in Washington, is in stark contrast to the sentiment expressed around the world as Wolfowitz came under pressure to resign from the Washington-based organization.